1994 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 62nd Grand Prix of Endurance, taking place at the Circuit de la Sarthe, and took place on 18 and 19 June 1994. The race was won by a car that had its roots in a 10-year-old design. Porsche exploited a loophole in the new GT regulations that allowed a single new car to represent a promised production run. Thus, in conjunction with customer team-owner Jochen Dauer, they created a road-legal version of the Porsche 962 Group C car. In the equivalency formula, GT cars were allowed more engine horsepower and a 50% bigger fuel tank than prototypes which, in turn, had better aerodynamics. The Dauer 962 Le Mans had both. Their main rivals would be Toyota, who put their support behind their two customer teams running a pair of Group C chassis after its 3.5-litre engined TS010 was no longer eligible.

The ACO had developed a new equivalency formula to be able to match Prototypes against GTs on a roughly equal level and the starting grid seemed to bear that out. It was Alain Ferté who put the homegrown Courage on pole position, with Derek Bell alongside him in an open-top Kremer spyder. It was Bell who swept around the outside to take the lead into the first corner before Ferté and Baldi in the Dauer passed him on the back straight. After the prototypes had pitted it left the Dauers of Baldi and Stuck running 1-2 at the end of the first hour. The challenge was taken up by the Toyotas who double-stinted their tyres to shorten their enforced extra fuel-stops. When Dalmas ran his Dauer out of fuel coming into the pit-lane and Sullivan had a puncture on his just after the pit-entry road, the Toyotas seized the opportunity and took their own 1-2 lead into the night. As temperatures fell, the performance of the Courages picked up, and they pulled back the gap to the top four. However, their charge ended early on Sunday with terminal engine problems. The Nisso Trust Toyota led through the night until pitting at dawn with a faulty differential. The hour spent on repairs dropped them to fifth, handing the lead over to the SARD Toyota. After their initial problems, the Dauer-Porsches had run well, never more than 1-2 laps behind, waiting for any slip-up. But all through the morning, the Toyota kept up its pace, pursued by the Dauers. It looked like Toyota might finally achieve their first Le Mans victory then with just 100 minutes to go, Jeff Krosnoff came to a stop at the pit exit. A broken gear-linkage leaving him with no gears. Jumping out, he manually slammed it into 3rd gear and did a lap to get back to the pits. The quarter-hour needed for repairs was all the Dauers needed to pass them. Nevertheless, Eddie Irvine took off to stage an all-out pursuit in the last hour. He caught up with second-placed Thierry Boutsen with ten minutes to go, and when they came up behind slower cars approaching the final chicane, Irvine pounced, trapping Boutsen behind the others. For the last couple of laps Boutsen tried to re-pass, scattering flag marshals expecting a tame procession to the flag. Irvine secured a courageous second, but the victory went to the Dauer-Porsche of Hurley Haywood, Yannick Dalmas and Mauro Baldi.

In the GT class, outside of the Dauer-Porsches, there were ten other makes in the two classes. The GT1 victory was expected as a foregone conclusion for the Dauers, but in GT2 it was initially between the Callaway Corvette and the Larbre team Porsche. However, after the Corvette was disqualified for refuelling on-track, the Porsche reliability left Larbre to lead home a class 1-2-3.